Gmail to Outlook
This is an explanation of how to get emails from Gmail in Outlook. There are a number of ways to do this including mbox to pst converters, but this way is slightly more convoluted, slightly safer, and it works with large amounts of emails. Also, I primarily use Linux so the ins and outs of Outlook are not my forte.
Some other, perhaps easier options might be,
to add the Gmail account to Outlook and then drag the emails into another folder in the Outlook account.
to download Thunderbird and use it to download the Gmail emails then convert them into eml and import them into Outlook.
Getting the emails from Gmail
These steps will get Google to export your Gmail data and then send you a link to a downloadable file at a later date. The file will be compressed and the emails will be in mbox format.
To get the emails from Gmail make sure you are logged in to the correct Google account and then go to Google Takeout .
Step 1
On the first page under the heading Products click "deselect all" to stop it including all your Google data in the download.
Scroll down until you come to the heading Mail and select it then scroll to the bottom and select Next step .
Step 2
The defaults in step 2 can be left untouched. Selecting Create Export will cause Google to start collecting your emails for export and they will send you a link at a later date for download.
When you receive the email with the download link go somewhere with good, free internet and download it remembering that the file may be quite large.
Importing the mbox file to Thunderbird
Extract the download file. It should be in zip format and right-clicking should provide an option to extract it.
Warning . The file is likely to be large and extraction is likely to use computer resources so close down all other work and expect not to be able to use your computer for a short period of time during extraction. Also check you have enough disk space.
The next step in the process is to convert the extracted mbox file to another format called eml which can be imported by Outlook (Outlook does not import mbox files).
To do this we will need to download and install Thunderbird from Mozilla. During installation, you will need to set up an email account. Any account will do. You can also set up a dummy account such as example@ example.com by choosing to,
- Set up an existing email address.
- Entering the dummy email address.
- Clicking manual configuration.
- Clicking advanced config and accepting the popup.
It is a bit of a run around but without an account the local folders do not show up in Thunderbird and we need a local folder to import the mbox file to.
At this point there should be three tabs open in Thunderbird, you can close down the last two as they are not needed and the first one should have the account (example@ example.com ) on the left with Local Folders underneath it. Right click on the Local Folders heading and select new folder in the menu. This will be the folder we are going to import the mbox file into so name appropriately.
There is one more thing we need before import the mbox and that is a Thunderbird extension called ImportExportTools NG .
To install this extension go to the,
- Tools menu
- Then Addons and themes
- Click on the Extension category in the side menu
- Place ImportExportTools NG into the search box and search
- Select Add to Thunderbird and accept the conditions.
Now you can go to the folder you created in the Local Folders area of Thunderbird, right click on the area and select,
- ImportExportTools NG
- Import mbox files
- All mbox files from directory (with sbd structure)
- Select the mbox file for import.
All your emails should now be in Thunderbird. You can now export them to other formats for import into Outlook (you can drag and drop eml files onto Outlook folders for example) or just add different email accounts to Thunderbird and then copy and paste the folder into the new account sometime when you have good internet and a lot of time (eg; before bed).
